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Monday, July 29, 2013

Curious Constructs: Iron Horse Bike Reviewed!

Today it's time for a review of one of the newer releases from Curious Constructs, the Iron Horse Bike! First of all who is the driving force behind Curious Constructs and what may you expect of the company? Here's an extract from the website "I'm Rob Angell, the owner of Curious Constructs, though you may know me instead as Col.Gravis - my pseudonym amongst the online wargaming community and upon my blog, Col.Gravis’ Praetorian Imperial Guard. Based in South West England, I’ve been involved in miniature wargaming for well over a decade, and, in this time, I’ve found myself more and more inclined towards sculpting my own original bits, and even complete miniatures.

I’ve dabbled in selling my work previously, as well as taking on occasional commission work, which I continue to do. However, in early 2012 I decided to take this one step further and establish my own online shop. The result of this is Curious Constructs, now upgraded with this brand new webstore. The range on offer is still relatively small, and will be of particular interest to only a relatively small number of gamers, though I have also recently started stocking items from other manufacturers.

In the future, we will be offering pieces which will be of interest to a whole new audience, as well as expanding on my existing range, as you may have seen from some of my recent previews. To that end, I’m busy working on a host of new additions, and, for the first time, have a number of others working alongside me on yet more new projects which you'll start to see more of in 2013. I’ll also be continuing to expand on my stock of other manufacturers’ products and hobby supplies."

Up to the actual review starting with the actual review, followed by the assembly and scale comparison. After that follows a short conclusion, giving the advantages and the price.

The content

The Iron Horse Bike is casted in resin and is scaled 28mm heroic much like the Games Workshop Warhammer 40K line and other smaller science fiction companies. Although the main part of the kit is made out of resin some smaller parts such as the handle bars and foot rests are casted in white metal due to the small scale and fragility of these pieces. The entire kit is made out of 10 pieces: Bike Front Wheel, Bike Chasis Stowage Accessories, Handelbars, Foot Rests, Biker Head, Carapace Torso, Bike Rider Armoured Arm Set, Bike Rider Legs. All of the pieces are well casted but come with resin parts inherent to the casting process. These can however easily be removed with a stanley knife and fine vile. Please make sure to sand these pieces in a well-ventilated room as resin dust is harmful for the health when inhaled.

The assembly

The assembly of the bike is quite straight forward as all pieces cane asily be glued in place using the right sort of glue! before I assembled the pieces I washed them in warm soapy water to remove casting residue and make the pieces easire to glue together. As you can see from the picture above the actuel bike exists out of 6 parts while the rider exists out of 5 parts.

For the construction, I first of all glued the main bike together, followed by the biker as you can then bend the already glued handle bar in place to fit the arms. You can also bend the foot rests to match the foots of the biker. As said previously you won't find any parts that don't fit as everything is cast well and you can clearly see where which parts need to be glued in place.

The scale comparison

Here's a scale comparison with a warhammer 40K miniature to show you the scale.

The conclusion

To conclude I can really recommend this fine resin-metal kit for the warhammer players looking for some quick attack units or as Imperial Guard Rough Riders. Although the kits seems to exist out of a large amount of parts they really fly together when they are well-prepped and glued with the right sort of superglue. This kit can be bough for £8.00 a piece from the Curious Constructs webstore.